Friday, February 28, 2014

Sketch-lovers rejoice! We're thrilled to debut our first sketch of 2014; it's by our very own sketch-mistress extraordinaire, the lovely Stephanie; and it's so flexible that we're sure EVERYONE will be pretty excited to make a card... or two... or three!

Lauren says, "I believe this was the EASIEST card i've made all year, and it's also one of my favorites. The proportions and shapes in the sketch are so wonderful, i felt like I couldn't go wrong! I've been saving the Crate Paper snow globe for just the right occasion, and when i saw the sketch I knew this week was it. I couldn't quite choose between the pretty trees and the elegant quatrefoil pattern, so I divided the background at the vertical line, for which I used a third coordinating paper. I love how this looks AND it's a nice flat mailable card!"

Stephanie says,"I started by choosing the item for my *circle*, a 3-D gift tag for my focal image ... then I finished my design using the sketch road-map and coordinating scraps of holiday papers ... I love the pop of glittery blue."

Now it's your turn to rock the sketch in your very own way. You have until 6pm (EST) on Wednesday, March 12, to link up as many cards as you're inspired to make! Keyword for galleries and our Flickr group is JB:14:05. ENJOY!

Friday, February 21, 2014

I know the title is a bit of a stretch, but I couldn't resist the ♥♥RED♥♥ reference in one of my favorite childhood holiday songs. We're still celebrating RED this week ... making cards that predominantly feature the color RED.
Here is our second round of RED designs:

Lauren says,"I used last week's (expired but still awesome) Unscripted Sketch #243 for my layout, which I thought would work pretty well with some of the many older, but still-beloved tags I still have from various retired Basic Grey holiday lines; and I think it did, actually! I also couldn't quite resist adding in a red, heart-shaped, vintage doily leftover from Valentine's Day, which I think sort of 'grounds' the cluster of tags."

Stephanie says, "I'm sure I bought this gorgeous piece of flocked SEI Winter Song paper because of the gorgeous red color & soft flocked texture (I love paper with texture) ... but after purchasing, it has been parked in my stash for years. Thankfully this prompt made me revisit my stash with a *red-focused* eye and I realized the flocked bird would be the perfect focal point for a 5" x 6.5" card design. It sort of feels like cheating when paper is this pretty, since all I had to do was detail trim 3 flocked snowflakes from the scraps and add a blue pearls and SRM Sticker to finish ...

but often easy is a very good thing."

We hope you'll find time to ♥GO RED♥ with us ... upload your cards by Wednesday,February 26th at 6pm EST ... keyword is JB:14:04 for our Flickr (and other) galleries.

Stephanie says, "I went hunting for all things *RED* in my holiday stash and found this great Christmas Circle paper by Teresa Collins. All I had to add were a plastic snowflake & plastic *think snow* words, which are some of the first embellishments I ever purchased when I started making cards ... so glad they finally found a holiday home."

Lauren's CardLauren says, "I've had this gorgeous Santa (who's scanned from a vintage greeting card, and printed out a bit smaller) sitting in my "leftovers" pile since the end of November, and I was thrilled to finally have the perfect card on which to use him! I've rotated the current Seize the Sketch ninety degrees to the left, added in a few other leftovers (like my last ancient scrap of SEI's gorgeous red velvet paper!) plus a bit of vintage (red!) doily, and called it a happy cardmakin' day."

We hope you'll find time to ♥GO RED♥ with us ... upload your cards by Wednesday, February 26th at 6pm EST ... keyword is JB:14:04 for our Flickr (and other) galleries.

Lauren says, "Yet another advantage to starting our holiday cards in January is that we can really take advantage of the post-xmas sales to snap up awesome supplies at bargain prices. My texty print and little houses came from a large tablet of glittery and metallic papers that were 70% off, which is hard to beat, right? I used Retro Sketches' 100th sketch to guide my layout."

Stephanie says, "I was searching through some vintage Christmas Ideals magazines for inspiration when I found this poem. I decided to use the layout from Feeling Sketchy and make the text the focal point of my design."

jingling all the way!

About Us

calling all ♥JINGLE BELLES♥!

do you have a great idea for a prompt? have you always wanted to design a card sketch? we want to make this a fun year-long GROUP project, so feel free to contribute your (kind & constructive) thoughts any time to stef and lauren: jinglebellesrock@hotmail.com